facilitating metacognition with a “flipped” instructional strategy terry huttenlock edd,...
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Facilitating Metacognition With a
“Flipped” Instructional Strategy
Terry Huttenlock EdD, Associate ProfessorEducational Technology Librarian
Wheaton CollegeApril 10, 2015
Goals
• Why use metacognitive strategies?
• Why use “flipped” pedagogy?
• How to:• Combine the two in a new library
instructional strategy.• Use metacognitive strategies for assessing
new strategies.
• Why do we need new instructional strategies?
Why Metacognition…?
…deliberate, planful, intentional, goal-directed, future-oriented mental behavior that can be used to accomplish cognitive tasks (Flavell, 1979).
Flavell, John H. (1979). Metacognition and cognitive monitoring: A new area of cognitive-developmental inquiry. American Psychologist, v. 34
(n. 10), 906-911.
Metacognition is, simply put, thinking about one’s thinking.
Process one uses to:
PlanMonitorAssess
Frequently Used Metacognitive Teaching Strategies
Pre-assessments—Encouraging Students to Examine Their Current Thinking:
“What do I already know about this topic that could guide my learning?”
The Muddiest Point—Giving Students Practice in Identifying Confusions:
“What was most confusing to me about the material explored in class today?”
Retrospective Post-assessments—Pushing Students to Recognize Conceptual Change:
“Before this course, I thought … Now I think …
Reflective Journals—Providing a Forum in Which Students Monitor Their Own Thinking:
“What about my research worked well that I should remember to do next time? What did not work well ? What should I do differently next time?
New ACRL Framework
Scholarship is Conversation:Value user-generated content and critically evaluate contributions made by others.
Research as InquiryPractice thinking critically when confronting new learning…
Recognize that learning is a process and that reflecting on errors or mistakes leads to new insights and discoveries.
Depends on information need and context…maintaining these attitudes and actions requires frequent self-monitoring
Searching as explorationAnalyze needs at the beginning of information searches
Reevaluate needs and next steps throughout the search process
Why Flipped?
“The flipped classroom describes a reversal of traditional teaching where students gain first exposure to new material outside of class, usually via reading or lecture videos, and then class time is used to do the harder work of assimilating that knowledge through strategies such as problem-solving, discussion or debates.”
(Vanderbilt University, Center for Teaching http://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/flipping-the-classroom/
)
Benefits of “Flipped”
Allow self-directed self-paced self-discovery learning.
Tailor in-person session to needs of students.
Make relevant and authentic.
Guide rather than prescribe.
Extends the 50-minute one-shot.
How this all began…
Use of an Advance Organizer in the Ill-Structured Problem Domain of Information
Seeking: A Comparative Case Study.
Mixed methods analysis
Studied the use of an advance organizer
AO based on metacognitive questioning prompts
Question prompts have been found to be an effective problem-solving strategy.
Premise: Searching is an information problem therefore it would benefit from the use of problem-solving strategies.
What is an Advance Organizer?
An advance organizer is relevant introductory materials presented in advance in any format of text, graphics, or hypermedia.
Different from overviews and summaries that emphasize key ideas. (Ausubel, 1968).
Examples:Present a framework for a module or lesson
Organizational cues
Tools that help connect the known to the unknown
Frameworks for helping students understand what it is they'll be learning
Ausubel, D. P. (1968). Educational psychology: A cognitive view. New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston.
Questioning was deliberate and focused
Consciously turned focus away from search engine interface pausing to think about their strategy.
Gave an additional learning goal – to reflect on their overall strategies
Not prescriptive, worked with their existing search strategy mental models
Conclusion: Future studies should explore ways to embed this into online search environments
Worksheet with Guide on the Side completed BEFORE in-person research instruction session.
Research Study
Original Advance Organizer
Assignment Flipped instruction
Assignment given after in-person
research instruction session.
Evolution...
Guide on the SidePerfect for “flipping.”
http://www.americanlibrariesmagazine.org/article/guide-side
Guide on the Side
Self-guided
Interactive http://code.library.arizona.edu/
Guiding instructions
Live browser window
Guide on the Side
Metacognitive Worksheet
Parallels the principles of metacognition – plan, monitor, access.
What is your topic of interest?
What do you already know?
What are some key words/terms you can use?
What worked?
What didn’t work?
What would you do differently next time?
Worksheets…
Reflect on your searching:
What didn’t work?When I attempted limit by year, I realized that many of the classic studies were excluded. Also, sometimes when limiting by document type, important papers were excluded.
What would you do different next time?I would spend more time examining the sources cited by the larger articles in order to find the key studies preceding the current article. I would also read the major studies in full, so that my growing knowledge would make searching for more specific articles easier.
What Worked?
Using more keywords in the search does not always help to narrow a search. It might be better to narrow the search input to a few specific key words. The time spent looking at every article to find relevant ones should be saved by using the refining tools.
What would you do different next time?
I would pick a few specific key words to begin the search. I would also take the time to look at every possible refinement option to find the best ways to narrow my search. The sorting options would also help to find articles with particular aspects.
What would you do different next time?
I would make sure that I was refining my search process properly, and also do more thinking beforehand. Not only would this expedite my search, but it would make my methodology a lot more effective.
What didn’t work?
Starting completely over did not work well when searching, nor did overloading with too many key words, since I felt this actually limited my results.
What would you do different next time?
Next time I will probably stick with what I felt worked well for me, starting with a general search, then refining with key words, but not too many. Next time I also will not start over every time I try a different search or try to refine.
What worked?
… Because many of the most recent of the papers investigated starvation's role in the arrested development dauer state, I also learned where the research frontier is for starvation stress in C. elegans.
What would you do different next time?
I would include a search for keywords in the title because it is particularly satisfying to have a paper title address your question.
Assessment
Using Metacognitive Principles
Classroom Critical Incident Questionnaire
Developed by Stephen Brookfield (1994).
The Classroom Critical Incident Questionnaire
Please take about five minutes to respond to the questions below about this weekend’s class …• At what moment in class this weekend did you
feel most engaged with what was happening?• At what moment in class this weekend were you
most distanced from what was happening? • What action that anyone (teacher or student)
took this weekend did you find most affirming or helpful?
• What action that anyone took this weekend did you find most puzzling or confusing?
What did you like about the library pre-session
activity?It allowed me to learn about the database interactively.
Made me think about my research project.
Citation search info. Also made class time more effective.
Reminder of what I had already learned, got me started in thinking about the upcoming project.
I like how applicable this was.
What did you dislike about the library pre-session
activity?Reviewed a lot of what we've learned in other classes - it gets old after a while.
I'm not a big fan of writing short answers about my research
Took a decent amount of time
Some of the quiz questions weren't really addressed throughout the assignment.
Would you recommend this as a worthwhile pre-
session activity?I would probably because I found it useful to know where I was at with my research "skills."
Yes, even though I've learned it several times, I still learned something new.
Yes, to make sure everyone is on the same page to prevent wasting time during the research session.
Probably not-we've learned/interacted with most of this stuff before.
Assess Outcomes
Metacogniti
ve Worksheet
Critical
Incident/Reflectiv
e Questionnai
re
Guide on the sideMetacognitive worksheet
Metacognitive Skills
Instructional Elements
Support All Literacies
Why do we need to change the way we teach research instruction?
Reflection on Project Survey
Think back to a challenging time during your research project:
What was particularly challenging for your?What did you do to overcome these challenges?
Think back to when you were working on your project:
What resources did you use for your project?What did you find most helpful? Least helpful?What surprised you the most?
Think back to your library research instruction session:What did you learn?
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100How difficult were these parts of your
project?
Very Easy
Easy
Challeng-ing
Very Chal-lenging
NANu
mb
er
of
Stu
de
nts
Teaching metacognitive questioning is format, search engine, and “need” neutral. It provides
a foundation to navigate the changing information and scholarly communication
sphere.
_______________________
Combining metacognitive strategies with a “flipped” instructional strategy has the
potential to increase the effectiveness and application of the ACRL framework during in-person library research session and minimize
the issue of repetition.
_______________________
New ways to assess effectiveness of instruction such as using metacognitive tools should
continue to be explored.
